Editorial: Michigan charter school system flawed, but we can make it work

Jun. 29, 2014

Bryson Stallworth, DaJonna Gallman and Marcus Cammon, all of Detroit, receive their swag from Oakland University — where they will attend this fall — during a rally on May 1 at Detroit Edison Public School Academy-Early College of Excellence. The Detroit charter school had a rally to honor its 94 seniors, all of whom will go on to higher education or military service. / Jessica J. Trevino/Detroit Free Press

Written by

the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

Michigan’s charter schools are largely unproven, unregulated and inadequate to solve the problems they were conceived to address.

Only Gov. Rick Snyder and the Legislature can change that — something they ought to do when they return to Lansing this fall.

The reasons to gain better control of independent public schools should be crystal clear, now that they’ve been laid out in a detailed Free Press series about charter schools in the state. When Michigan charter schools work, they turn out tremendous results. They provide parents with a quality alternative to traditional public schools, and because they operate separately from government bureaucracies, they can be important laboratories of innovation.

But, when charter schools fall short — and 38% of them are in the bottom quarter of the state’s school rankings — they waste taxpayer money and betray the state’s children. Just as bad, far too many charter schools dodge the transparency that needs to attend any expenditures of public money.

Our children’s education is too important — the bridge to economic opportunity and intellectual growth — to be left to free-market chaos. Legislators should think about what the lack of charter school regulation is doing to Michigan children, and hold that thought even as they are buffeted and lobbied by the entrenched interests already reacting in panic to the Free Press’ reports.

Improving student outcomes is the only legitimate reason to allow independent public schools. So Michigan has to stop tolerating mediocre and subpar charter operators. The charter law should be rewritten to establish standards that insist operators have a record of high performance before they open schools in Michigan. The law also could allow for new operators on the condition that they partner with established institutions that have good track records.

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Once charters are open, state law should hold them to a simple standard: They should be improving, or closing, by the academic measures agreed upon to hold all public schools accountable. There should be no room for lousy schools to operate year after year. That goes not just for charters, but for all public schools, including the traditional public schools that struggle year after year without state intervention.

Charters should be forced to disclose the way they spend every dime of public money, and they ought to risk being shut down if they refuse to provide information to anyone. This is crucially important to establishing an ethos of transparency similar to what anyone else receiving public money would have to recognize.

Charter advocates have sometimes argued that the charm of independent public schools is freedom from “onerous” regulation that stifles creativity and innovation in public schools. That may be true where the educational side of a school is concerned, but it’s dead wrong when it comes to money. Public expenditures need to be done in public. Charter schools should never be given a pass on that.

Michigan’s charter schools ethics law is weak, prohibiting only the most obvious conflicts of interest. As a result, scandalous behavior can unfold with public money flowing to rogues who would scam both the state — and the taxpayers. That’s not acceptable. If public money is going to be spent on land purchases or lease deals, or on contractors, it needs to pass the same smell test that’s applied in other contexts. Self-dealing shouldn’t be allowed, period. The law should reflect that.

And the lack of scrutiny of charters run by for-profit management companies in Michigan deserves its own legislative fix. Those charters rub up against the very nature of public education, whose purpose is to create an educated citizenry and help balance out inequalities of opportunity. That costs money — and inserting the profit motive skews priorities in a way that’s inconsistent with the idea that “profit” derived from public money ought to be invested in public assets, not private pockets.

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Some states do not allow full-service for-profit charter management companies in the first place. Michigan has more, by far, than any other state. They need to be subject to some state standards regarding rate of return, reinvestment in public assets and transparency in how each public dollar is spent.

Parents need real, usable information about school choice. One of the good things that has come of the charter movement is the sense, among so many parents, that they have choices when it comes to their kids’ education. But uninformed choice is just as bad as no choice at all, and Michigan does little to be sure that parents have the data to determine the distinction between quality and inferior choices. Too often, information about charters comes directly from charters to parents, and it’s skewed to attract enrollment, not to reflect results.

The state’s failure to ensure reasonable regulation of charter schools is a cruel joke on the state’s children and its taxpayers.

But there is hope for charter schools and the charter school movement, which started with a mission of greater innovation, higher academics and more choices for parents who didn’t find quality education in traditional schools.

The hope lies in taking charter schools more in hand, and ensuring that they do what they promise.

The governor and the Legislature need to work with state Superintendent Mike Flanagan and the Department of Education to come up with a solution that respects the high stakes here — our kids — and ensures that Michigan’s fiasco of charter oversight comes to a swift end.